“What the hell’s going on with Lost? I don’t think they know. I think from week to week they go, ‘Let’s do this.’ And then someone else says, ‘No, this would be a good idea.’ I love that show, but I don’t think they know what they’re doing.” —Ellen DeGeneres

“I am flattered that Ellen is a fan of our show,” says exec producer Carlton Cuse, who promises Ellen there is a master plan, with some sweet payoffs, if she sticks through the final season. Dominic Monaghan recently had a secret breakfast meeting with producer Damon Lindelof to discuss how he might manage returning to Lost as Charlie. “We would like there to be some visitations from people we’ve loved over time,” Cuse says. Michael Emerson, who plays Ben, confirms, “The final season will resemble the first. I know there are plans for big people we have parted company with to reappear.” But one crucial component from the very first pilot episode will most likely be absent from the reunion: cocreator J.J. Abrams, who tells me he won’t be returning to Hawaii to direct the series finale. “I would selfishly love it,” he says, “but director Jack Bender has been living in Hawaii for years and doing amazing work. For me to come in and direct the finale would be cruel and unusual.”

The exec producer of Ian Somerhalder’s new CW series, The Vampire Diaries, is close friends with Lost exec producer Damon Lindelof. So when he’s not sucking blood in the South, Ian may reappear on the island as Boone. While apartment hunting in Atlanta, where Diaries shoots, with his new on-screen vampire brother Paul Wesley, Ian tells me, “I’ve heard a little bit about what’s happening this season on Lost, and there’s definitely an avenue they’re going down to bring back a lot of us.”

Any crossover [with] Lost would “only help the success of our show…as long as it’s not screwing up production,” Ian says. So what if Boone, Shannon, Charlie and the rest of Lost’s “living dead” turn out to be vampires? “That would not be good,” says the actor, who currently lives around the corner from Maggie Grace (Shannon) in Venice Beach. “There are already enough vampires flying around the airwaves. If we can keep it at True Blood, Twilight and Vampire Diaries, the world will be better off!”